Occupational Hazards

Author: Stewart, Rory

Iraq

Published on 9 May 2024 by PAN MACMILLAN (Picador) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 464 pages
130 x 198 x 31 | 342g

A fascinating insight into the complexity, history and unpredictability of Iraq from Rory Stewart, bestselling author of Politics on the Edge and host of hit podcast The Rest Is Politics.

Devastating – The Sunday TimesAbsolutely absorbing – Ken LoachBy September 2003, six months after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the anarchy had begun. Rory Stewart, then a young British diplomat, was appointed as the Coalition Provisional Authority’s deputy governor of a province of 850,000 people in the southern marshland region. There, he and his colleagues confronted gangsters, Iranian-linked politicians, tribal vendettas and a full Islamist insurgency.

Occupational Hazards is Rory Stewart’s inside account of the attempt to rebuild a nation, the errors made, the misunderstandings and insurmountable difficulties encountered. It reveals an Iraq hidden from most foreign journalists and soldiers, a rare and compelling insight that remains just as important today.

An extraordinarily vivid tale – The GuardianWonderfully observed, wise, evocative – The Observer